Britain’s interior minister
Suella Braverman has defended a controversial plan to send undocumented migrants and asylum seekers to Rwanda on a one-way ticket, saying she was convinced the African country was safe
to resettle irregular migrants who had arrived in Britain.
But she declined to set any deadline for the first
deportations to the country.
The British government is hoping to send thousands of
migrants more than 4,000 miles away to the East African country
as part of a 120 million pound ($148 million) deal to deter
asylum seekers crossing the English Channel from France in small
boats.
The plan was announced in April 2022, but the first
deportation flight was blocked by an injunction from the
European Court of Human Rights. London’s High court ruled in
December the scheme was legal, but opponents are seeking to
appeal that ruling.
Britain last month set out details of a new law barring the
entry of asylum seekers arriving in small boats across the
Channel that will prevent them from claiming asylum and will aim
to deport them either back to their homeland or to so-called
safe third countries.
Some charities say the proposed law could be impractical and
criminalise the efforts of thousands of genuine refugees.
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Braverman was asked by the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg about a
violent protest over rations in a camp in Rwanda in 2018, which
Rwandan police said resulted in the deaths of at least five
refugees.
Braverman said she was not familiar with that case but was
“on the strong ground” in saying Rwanda was a safe country, and she
added that it was the right solution for Britain’s small boats
problem.
“We’re looking at 2023 and beyond,” she said on Sunday. “The
High Court – senior expert judges – have looked into the detail
of our arrangement with Rwanda and found it to be a safe country
and found our arrangements to be lawful.”
Braverman, who visited Rwanda last month, would not give a
deadline for the first flight to depart.
“We have to be realistic,” she told Sky News. “We had a very strong victory in the High Court at the end of last year in Rwanda. We’ve now introduced legislation. We want to move as quickly as possible to relocate people from the UK to Rwanda.”
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